Who really said it

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated

Q: Did Mahatma Gandhi say "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"?

No. This exact sentence appears nowhere in Gandhi's writings — it is absent from his 98-volume Collected Works, and the earliest located attribution to him dates to 1980, thirty-two years after his death. Wikiquote, which lists it as Disputed, traces the underlying thought to David Strauss's The Old Faith and the New (1873 translation), though even Strauss's actual sentence reads quite differently — the familiar wording is a later, anonymous reformulation credited to no one in particular.

Not Gandhi — the thought traces to David Strauss David Friedrich Strauss 1808–1874 · German Protestant theologian & biblical scholar

No primary source connects this wording to Gandhi; the nearest documented ancestor is Strauss, but the popular sentence matches his text only in idea, not in words. Rights unconfirmed

This exact sentence appears nowhere in Gandhi’s writings — it is absent from his 98-volume Collected Works, and the earliest located attribution to him dates to 1980, thirty-two years after his death. Wikiquote, which lists it as Disputed, traces the underlying thought to David Strauss’s The Old Faith and the New (1873 translation), though even Strauss’s actual sentence reads quite differently — the familiar wording is a later, anonymous reformulation credited to no one in particular.

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” widely attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but the sentence appears nowhere in his 98-volume Collected Works and has not been found credited to him before 1980, 32 years after his death. The thought traces to David Friedrich Strauss, The Old Faith and the New, trans. Mathilde Blind (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), vol. 2, §71, p. 59: "The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization."

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Mahatma Gandhi. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

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Provenance

The nearest thing to an original

Popularly credited to: Mahatma Gandhi — no source ever located
Nearest documented source: The Old Faith and the New: A Confession
Translation: Mathilde Blind, 1873 (New York: Henry Holt & Co.); German original Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1872
Earliest Gandhi attribution: 1980 — 32 years after his death

Man pays heavily for the violation of these duties, as it blunts his feeling. Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and murderers, have first been torturers of animals. The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization. The Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination; we Germans, not half well enough. Vol. II, §71, pp. 59–60

This is David Strauss in 1873 — not Gandhi. Note how far it sits from the familiar sentence even so: Strauss writes of “real civilization,” not “greatness” or “moral progress,” and offers his test as one chief measure rather than a verdict. The popular wording is a reformulation of this idea by an unknown hand, not a translation of this passage.

Scanned first English edition, 1873

Read The Old Faith and the New at the Internet Archive

Wikiquote: Mahatma Gandhi (Disputed)

The paper trail

Wikiquote files it under “Disputed.” Its entry states the line is “not found in that essay nor in any of Gandhi’s Complete works,” and that the original “seems to be by David Strauss.” It records the earliest Gandhi attribution as a letter to the editor of The Gazette (Montreal), 18 March 1980, about the Canadian seal hunt. See the Disputed section ↗. Quote Investigator has no article on this quote.
The usual citation collapses on inspection. The line is most often footnoted to The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism (1959). The complete essay is online ↗ and runs to about 9,100 words; searching it returns no instance of “greatness,” “moral progress,” “animals are treated,” or “judged by the way.”
The archives were searched exhaustively. A researcher went through all 98 volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Publications Division, Government of India, 1999) and reported that “there is no such quote to be found in any of the 98 volumes” ↗, and that authors who cite it always cite each other rather than Gandhi.
The Strauss passage checks out verbatim. In Mathilde Blind’s 1873 translation for Henry Holt & Co., the sentence Wikiquote quotes closes p. 59, in the middle of a discussion of humanity’s duty to minimise animal suffering that continues onto p. 60 to praise Buddhism and Schopenhauer. Read the scanned edition ↗.

No rights status can honestly be asserted for the famous sentence, because nobody knows who wrote it or where it was first printed — it is an anonymous formulation of uncertain date, and a work that cannot be identified cannot be dated for copyright purposes. The separate matter of the documented ancestor is clearer: Mathilde Blind’s English translation of Strauss, published by Henry Holt & Co. in 1873, is long out of copyright and in the public domain in the United States, so the Strauss passage quoted above may be reproduced freely. That freedom does not extend to the popular wording, which is not Strauss’s text.

Fact-check

How Gandhi got the credit

This is a textbook magnet-name misattribution: a morally resonant sentence with no author drifts toward the most famous plausible candidate and sticks. Three separate things went wrong here — the person, the citation, and the wording — and a fourth kept it alive.

Mahatma Gandhi no source, ever

A search of all 98 volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi turned up no such quote in any of them ↗. Wikiquote records the earliest attribution to Gandhi as a 1980 letter to the editor of The Gazette (Montreal) ↗ — 32 years after Gandhi’s assassination.

The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism (1959) doesn't contain it

This Navajivan compilation is the footnote everyone reaches for — a citation Ralph Keyes had already flagged as unverifiable in The Quote Verifier (2006), p. 74, and which Wikiquote cross-references there. The full text of the essay ↗ contains no instance of “greatness,” “moral progress,” or “animals are treated.” The citation has been copied between authors without anyone opening the book.

An anonymous 20th-century reformulation not Strauss's words either

Wikiquote suggests the original “seems to be” David Strauss, but his 1873 sentence reads: “The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization ↗.” No “greatness,” no “moral progress.” The famous sentence is nobody’s documented wording — which is exactly why it needed a famous name.

Quotation sites and campaign literature

The line circulates on Goodreads with thousands of likes and no source ↗, and appears in advocacy material, speeches, and exam questions as settled fact. Variant wordings proliferate — “can be judged” / “may be judged,” with and without “its moral progress” — the classic fingerprint of a quote with no fixed original.

Gandhi held views close to this and expressed them in words that are fully documented — in Young India, 6 October 1921, he wrote that “protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God ↗.” The sentence the internet gives him is not one of them.

Context

A true thing that the wrong man said

The sentence endures because it is a good one: it converts an abstraction — national character — into a test anyone can apply by walking through a slaughterhouse, a stray shelter, or a stable. Attach it to Gandhi and the test acquires a saint’s authority. That is precisely the mechanism that should make a reader suspicious, and it is why the line appears in animal-welfare campaigns, parliamentary debates, and civil-service exam papers without a footnote in sight.

The irony is that Gandhi genuinely held something close to this view and said so in language that is fully documented. In Young India on 6 October 1921 he wrote that “protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God,” and that “the appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more forcible because it is speechless.” The tragedy of the fake quote is that it crowds out the real one — and hands critics an easy way to dismiss the argument on a technicality.

Gandhi really did believe something like this. He just never wrote this sentence — and the man who came closest was a German theologian who died five years after Gandhi was born.

Other origins that get suggested — and what the evidence actually supports

The 1959 vegetarianism essay. The single most common citation is R. K. Prabhu’s compilation The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism (Navajivan, 1959) — a citation Ralph Keyes had already flagged as unverifiable in The Quote Verifier (2006), p. 74, which is why Wikiquote cross-references him there rather than to endorse the footnote. The essay is freely available and I searched the whole of it: the words “greatness,” “moral progress,” and “animals are treated” do not occur once. The citation is a dead end that has been copied from footnote to footnote for decades.

The Horse Memorial. A commenter on the Animals Matter to God investigation suggested Gandhi may have absorbed the idea from the Boer War Horse Memorial at Port Elizabeth, unveiled in February 1905 while Gandhi was living in South Africa. Its plinth does read “The greatness of a nation consists not so much in the number of its people or the extent of its territory as in the extent and justice of its compassion” ↗. That opening clause is a genuinely striking echo — but no evidence places Gandhi at the monument or in print about it, and the memorial says nothing about how animals are “treated.” Treat this as an unproven suggestion, not a finding.

The wider family of sayings. Wikiquote notes that similar lines circulated through the twentieth century with no Gandhi connection at all, including one credited to the actress Mrs. Fiske in the Salinas Index-Journal of 1 July 1933: “The civilization of any country can be told by the way it treats its animals.” The thought was common property long before it was Gandhi’s.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Justice Character

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Mahatma Gandhi (Disputed)en.wikiquote.org

The authoritative anchor. Files the quote under Disputed, notes it is absent from Gandhi's Complete Works, traces the thought to David Strauss, and records the earliest Gandhi attribution (1980).

Strauss, The Old Faith and the New (1873)archive.org

Scanned first English edition, translated by Mathilde Blind. The ancestor sentence is at the foot of p. 59, in §71 of Vol. II.

The Gandhi 'hoax quote' investigationanimalsmattertogod.com

The searcher who went through all 98 volumes of the Collected Works and found nothing, and who documents the broken chain of citation among authors who quote it.

Gandhi, The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism (1959)mkgandhi.org

The essay most often cited as the quote's source. Read it and search it: the sentence is not there, and neither is the word 'greatness'.

David Friedrich Straussen.wikipedia.org

Background on the German theologian (1808-1874) whose 1872 Der alte und der neue Glaube carries the nearest documented ancestor of the line — though Strauss himself credits the sentiment to Buddhism and Schopenhauer.

The quote on Goodreads (2,570 likes, no source)goodreads.com

A snapshot of how the misattribution propagates: thousands of endorsements, credited to Gandhi, with no book, speech, or date attached.

The documented ancestor

The theologian who actually wrote it down

David Friedrich Strauss

1808–1874 · German Protestant theologian & biblical scholar

David Friedrich Strauss was a German theologian who detonated nineteenth-century biblical scholarship with Das Leben Jesu (1835–36), arguing that the Gospel miracle narratives were mythical in character — not lies, but imaginative religious expression. Albert Schweitzer later divided the entire quest for the historical Jesus into the periods before and after him. His final major work, Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872), turned toward materialism and science, and it is there — in a passage on humanity’s duties to animals — that the idea now pinned on Gandhi appears in print.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Nearest documented source

David Friedrich Strauss, The Old Faith and the New: A Confession, trans. Mathilde Blind (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), vol. 2, §71, p. 59. The wording popularly attributed to Gandhi is not documented in any of his works; the earliest attribution to Gandhi located by Wikiquote is Doris Potter, letter to the editor, The Gazette (Montreal), 18 March 1980, p. 8.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-greatness-of-a-nation-and-its-moral-progress-can-be